It's a lot like life

Thirty-Five Years AgoA San Diego tennis odyssey should both begin and end at Morley Field. This eucalytpus shaded corner of Balboa Park is a local tennis Mecca, and offers 25 of the finest, most immaculately clean courts in the city.

Tennis isn’t a fad or status symbol here — it is a way of life. It is played at all levels of skill, but always with the same intense enthusiasm.

You don’t see Mercedes Benzes lining the streets, you see Volkswagens. How can you support a Mercedes when you play tennis all day long?— “IT’S A LOT LIKE LIFE,”Mac Perry, June 12, 1975

Thirty Years AgoIt is a bright, sunny Saturday afternoon in April and a small crowd has gathered in the Mira Mesa shopping center mall, the hub of a community that is as far from the consciousness of most San Diegans as it is from the core of the city.

“I remember coming out here for the first Mira Mesa Day, when it was a desert and we had a lot of parents and no services,” [Roger] Hedgecock recalls. “Now when I look around Mira Mesa and see what a great place it is to live, it makes me realize why I love local government.”

The crowd is unresponsive; the only audible reaction to Hedgecock comes from a 17-year-old girl who complains loudly to her girlfriend, “I’m so hot.”— “NORTH TO MIRA MESA,”Larry Keller, June 12, 1980

Twenty-Five Years AgoNostalgic carnival-goers who each summer relish the opportunity to marvel at the two-headed baby, the five-legged calf, and other freak show oddities are sure to be disappointed when the Del Mar Fair opens June 20. This summer, the fair’s board of directors has formally voted to ban freak shows from their usual haunts at the end of the fair’s fun zone. Fair spokesman James Stewart says the reasons are declining attendance and a desire to rid the fair of the “sleazy” image board directors feel the freak shows have lent to the fair in the past.

“We also noticed that the freak shows tended to attract the low element of our society. That whole area became sort of seamy.”— CITY LIGHTS: “BOARD NOT FREAKING FAIR THIS YEAR,”Mark Orwoll, June 13, 1985

Twenty Years AgoJack Hanson claims it was all a misunderstanding; he never told the East County Coalition for the Homeless that he locked sleeping transients in a dumpster one night. What he did say was that transients got locked in some dumpsters accidentally by business owners who didn’t know they were there.— CITY LIGHTS: “HEARD ANY GOOD HOMELESS STORIES LATELY?”Brae Canlen, June 14, 1990

Fifteen Years AgoSuggest to a 20-year-old that she might be naive, and you’re likely to get your head chewed off. Ask Jewel Kilcher how she got signed to a major label and she answers, “I think angels, personally.” She’s not kidding, and she doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her rainbows-and-unicorns attitude.— “I THINK ANGELS, PERSONALLY,”Julene Snyder, June 8, 1995

Ten Years AgoOnly one question drives the three-hour-long show [The Full Monty]: will six unemployed millworkers strip “all the way”? Well, yes, and…no. For some the Monty will be, at best, half-full, for others half-empty.

Five Years AgoThere are feral parrots in Ocean Beach. The telephone wire outside my bedroom window must look like Niagara Falls to the exotic birds because every morning I’m squawked awake by some young avian couple consummating their nuptial vows. I’m starting a war that will escalate from propaganda pamphlets (written in parrot) to hot water thrown from my window to the “nuclear” option: a pellet gun. You parrots are messing with a SON OF A BITCH now!— REMOTE CONTROL KING, Ollie, June 9, 2005